Hello, world! This blog began on September 28, 2007, and so far nobody has come looking for me with tar and feathers.
On my honor, I will do my best not to bore you. All comments are welcome as long as your discourse is civil and your language is not blue.

Happy reading, and come back often!

And whether my cup is half full or half empty, fill my cup, Lord.

Copyright 2007 - 2017 by Robert H.Brague

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

From time to time I have done a bit of genealogical sleuthing to learn more about my roots, but I would not say I am obsessed with the subject. Mrs. RWP might disagree. Still, I have never plunked down one red cent to ancestry.com or any other search site for the privilege of seeing their data. I do remember that my father used to say that his mother told them they were related to U.S. President Grover Cleveland.

It was interesting and I was curious but never interested enough to pursue the subject.

This week I pursued it (but I still didn't spend any money).

It turns out that President Cleveland -- "old 22/24" -- and I are indeed related. To be specific, he and I are sixth cousins, three times removed. (I call him "old 22/24" because he served two terms as president of the United States but the terms were not consecutive. He was elected in both 1884 and 1892. If George H.W. Bush can be called "old 41" then I can call Grover "old 22/24".)

I already knew that my father's mother was Edith Lillian (Johnson) Brague (1877-1938) and that her mother was Bloomy Jane (Cleveland) Johnson (1840-1900), so I began tracing Bloomy Jane's ancestors this week and went back as far as an Edward Wynne who was born in Yorkshire in 1582 and died in Yorkshire in 1606, who may have been my tenth great-grandfather.

So I'm a Yorkshireman!!! (maybe).

I say maybe because it hinges on whether the Edward Wynne who was born in Yorkshire in 1582 and died in Yorkshire in 1606 was the father of an Edward Winn who was born in Suffolk in 1604 and died in Massachusetts in 1682; no one seems to know for certain. The Suffolk Edward had a daughter named Ann who became the wife of a Moses Cleveland who turned out to be my eighth great-grandfather and President Grover Cleveland's fifth-grandfather. Moses Cleveland and Ann (Winn) Cleveland eventually emigrated from England to America and died in Massachusetts (Ann in 1682 and Moses in 1702). I have more information about my ancestors but I won't bore you with it.

I may be other things too -- there are connections on the Cleveland side to Ipswich in Suffolk -- but once a Yorkshireman, always a Yorkshireman.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Editor's note. There seems to be a fly in the ointment in that my newly found long-lost cousin Peggy out on the West Coast tells me that she has a photograph of little Edith Lillian Johnson being held by her great-grandfather, Arthur Cleveland, and in my searchings this week I didn't find an Arthur Cleveland. So perhaps I have been barking up the wrong tree (pun intended) and more research is warranted. I hope it doesn't interfere with my being a Yorkshireman. --RWP]

One judge said Amira had the soul of Maria Callas. He may be right. Here is Maria Callas singing the same song (2:09). Puccini's aria is in Italian, of course, but since this post has a more international flavor than my usual ones, Miss Callas's rendition includes a translation in French.

Monday, May 9, 2016

So just in case everyone continues hell-bent for leather to put candles on birthday cakes in spite of the wonderful suggestion in my last post and global warming continues unabated, hastening the end (a scant 500 million years hence) or not (the end could happen sooner, when we least expect it, perhaps on a sunny afternoon next October, for example), I urge you to read what some nice scientists at Columbia University have published, a learned treatise on what we will need to do to survive doomsday. The article is brought to us courtesy of an internet news service in Australia, wouldn't you know, even though doomsday is by definition, as I mentioned in the title of this post, something no one will survive.

The comments after the article are interesting too, but I would really love to hear my readers' reactions.

It occurs to me that by the time our race is that old, perhaps we ("we" forsooth) having grown weary of the world like Tolkien's elves, will be ready, even eager, happily anticipating -- mama in her kerchief and I in my cap, as it were -- lying down for the longest of all winter naps, but that, I suppose, is beside the point.

What concerns me more than any of that is the fact that my writing and thought processes are becoming more and more like Billy Ray Barnwell's (q.v.) every day.

Monday, May 2, 2016

There are roughly 7,300,000,000 people alive on planet earth today (actually there are more than that, but I'm rounding to keep things simple) and there are 365 days in a year. Therefore, every single day, 20,000,000 people celebrate their birthdays.

Followers

My Other Blog Is A Rolls-Royce

About me

has lived on earth for 77 years and has been married for nearly 55 of those years to Ellie, his wife. They have two sons, one daughter, the appropriate assortment of in-laws, and six absolutely magnificent grandchildren. He enjoys reading, playing the piano, driving in the country, sitting by the ocean, watching birds fly, gazing into a roaring fire, holding his wife's hand, and spending time with his grandchildren. He doesn't fancy doing yard work, walking a dog who definitely is not in the mood, or cleaning up after one who is (RIP Jethro, 2004-2013).

Me, circa 2010 (with Mrs. RWP)

A reader in Oregon has requested a current photograph. For the thick of skull, I want to say that I am not exceedingly tall nor is Mrs. RWP exceedingly short. She is sitting in a chair; I am standing behind her and slightly to her right, your left. I am nothing if not thorough. Handsome and thorough. Exceedingly intelligent, very handsome, and thorough. I forgot humble.

Me, circa 1943

A few months before this photograph was taken, I fell through a hole in a chain link fence in New York City and landed on my head on a school’s cement playground that was six feet below sidewalk level. I had a brain concussion. Some people think this helps explain why I am the way I am today. Other people insist nothing can explain why I am the way I am today.

Poem by a Yorkshire Lad

Song for Lost Youth

Perhaps I should have cradled it
Like a dove
Kept it safe with tender love
But I squandered it -
Gushing-blundering-raging
Like a wild mountain stream
Desperate for an ocean
That was but a distant dream.
...I just never thought
That I could have loitered in the shallows
Reflecting the blueness of the sky
- Concealing silver fishes
- Quietly biding my time
- Stretching it out.
And so, and so it's gone now
- My ephemeral youth
- That precious once only gift
- That honeyed sweetness,
Leaving only the trembling resonance
Of distant echoes
From half-remembered hills.